Old Books Recovered: Graham Earnshaw

I’m inaugurating a new feature today: the Letter from China Q. & A., which will appear now and then when someone of interest wanders by. Many of these people will be related in some way to the subject of foreigners in China, and I welcome suggestions. Today, we talk to Shanghai-based Graham Earnshaw, the recovering journalist and entrepreneur behind Earnshaw Books, which is publishing “Beleaguered in Peking,” “400 Million Customers,” and some long-forgotten gems on the experience of being a foreigner in China. His list caught my eye when he released “Across China on Foot,” an obscure travelogue from the early twentieth century by Edwin Dingle—a book that once inspired me to walk across much of Sichuan Province with his book as a map.

When did you found Earnshaw Books and why?

We founded it in 2007, on the back of the production-and-distribution capability we built originally for business directories. My hope is that the reprints we do will provide entertainment as well as a richer context to the role of foreigners in the old China, beyond the cliché of foreigners being the evil exploiters of Chinese coolies. I am fascinated by the misunderstandings and disconnects between China and the West, by the clash of arrogances. With the reprints, we can give some of the rich store of obscure English-language books published in the old China—nineteenth century through to 1950—another run in the sun. There are some lovely forgotten books which illuminate their own era and also help us to understand China today. There is a purposeful misrepresentation in some quarters, of the foreigner role in the old China. There were foreigners who lived and died here, saw China as their home, and worked for China’s future as well as their own. Of course, there was also exploitation of Chinese by foreigners, but today I see examples of exploitation of Chinese by Chinese, which is just as inevitable and just as depressing.

What are some of the ways in which you’ve found your books, and what are your criteria?

Many of the reprints are pulled off my own bookshelf. Some are proposed by friends and fellow fanatics. We choose books that we think are a great read, ones that have stood the test of time, and are richly reflective of their own era in a digestible way.

You’ve had an eclectic range of jobs in China. What have been your most difficult experiences here?

Well, the night of June 3-4, 1989, on Tiananmen Square, was certainly a unique experience. I remember a couple of flights on China Eastern planes where the crew was clearly as relieved to land safely as I was. But most difficult experiences over the years I guess have involved arrogance in some way or another, blithe disrespect for people as fellow human beings and for China’s own history and cultural heritage. Lessons learned? That persistence counts more than brilliance. And that showing respect is fundamental in all dealings.

Most rewarding experiences? Most mortifying?

The most rewarding macro experience has been to watch China emerge from the literal and figurative darkness of the nineteen-seventies through to its brightly-lit current self. The process has made me an optimist. Also, the hundreds of conversations I have had in recent years, while on a walk across the country, with farmers and kids and grandmothers in remote parts of rural China. They have convinced me that human nature is fundamentally good. The most mortifying experiences have often involved the Chinese grain-alcohol baijiu, about which the only good thing to say is that every glass tastes better than the last.

In your work, you’ve come across the full range of foreigners to come to China in the past century or so—visionaries, eccentrics, idealists, wayward souls. Who interests you most and why?

I am most impressed by foreigners who become a part of the fabric of China while remaining true to their own cultures. Amongst the visionaries, eccentrics, and wayward souls I admire, are Edmund Backhouse, Carl Crow, Victor Sassoon, Fredy Bush, and a Palestinian guitarist who played in the Peking All-Stars called Nassir.

In 1969, Jonathan Spence published “To Change China,” an influential book about three hundred years of foreigners and their fragile ambitions for the place. Do foreigners stand any better chance of achieving their objectives in China today than they did when Spence wrote about the subject?

China remains the place it has always been, where nothing is allowed and everything is possible. But it is much more open today than it has ever been on nearly every level, including commerce and investment. A high proportion of foreign companies operating here now make money. Foreigners who are looking to change China will always be disappointed. Despite all the batterings, both external and self-inflicted, over the past a hundred and fifty years, this is a strong and confident culture. China will change and is changing, but it will change at its own pace, and in its own way. Foreigners can offer alternative approaches by example, and Chinese people are clearly interested in the experience of the West in all ways. But there is one approach that is useless, represented by an incident I remember of an Englishman at breakfast in the Peking Hotel in 1979 sending back boiled eggs three and four times, because they were either under or overdone. His wife suggested that he should just eat the eggs, but he was adamant, insisting loudly: “They have got to learn!”

Evan Osnos joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008, and covers politics and foreign affairs.